Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Scripsit Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
> This is a conference for Debian development. By definition,
> Debian is 100%free. Am I mistaken in assuming that people
> contributing to Debian are already familiar with the social contract,
> and have decided to conform to it?
You are mistaken in thinking that the social contract mandates
anything about the freesom of things that we do not put into our
operating system.
> Are you now advocating we throw open contribution to Debian to
> all kinds of licenses for software content, and not run away from the
> non-free software by refusing to do so?
Why do you persist in refusing to to ignore people making a
distinction between things we put into our operating system and things
that we don't?
Debian is not about freedom for all content. Debian is about an
operating system that consists of free content. The project has no
official opinion about contents that is not in our operating system.
> Hmm. Blogs and mail, where the content is percieved to be the
> opinion of the author, and notratified by the project, seems
> definitely different from invited talks and papers,
I dont see a difference that is not overshadowed by orders of
magnitude by the difference between things we put into our operating
system and things that we don't put into our operating system.
> I see. The project using funds to defray expenses of people
> who attend the conference counts for nothing, eh? You see nothing
> wrong in the Debian project paying for a paper with a non-free
> content?
Not as long as that paper is not put into our operating system.
> Actually, if it is considered a part of Debian by a
> significant number of observers, we are failing to clearly mark
> content as non-free,
No we are not. You allege that those observers think that Debian means
"free, even if marked otherwise". That is simply not true.
> So, you are advocating shipping, say, EULA'd sotware in
> Debian, and letting the best software win, and the hell with the
> DFSG? Or, if not, why the difference in your stance?
Why do you insist on ignoring the enormous difference between
shipping something in our operating system and not shipping something
in our operating system?
--
Henning Makholm "De kan rejse hid og did i verden nok så flot
Og er helt fortrolig med alverdens militær"
Reply to: